Makes sense to me. Lower engine speed should mean less stress--the torque convertor has more slippage at lower speeds. In park/neutral the output of the convertor (turbine?) is spinning, while none of the guts are--and those guts won't be spinning until you start moving.

Maybe shifting into neutral would help, depending upon if the pump runs in in park or not. A bit more loading, to bring engine speed down, that is.

But it seems pretty easy to find things to do while killing 30 seconds--like buckling up, checking windows/mirrors, etc.

Well, I just got some more info. The rebuild is actually going to run $3200, and I guess it was slipping pretty bad. My Mother said she tried pulling away from a traffic light and it was "acting like it was in neutral".

Hopefully they'll get a few more years out of it after this. The rest of the car is in really nice shape.